Evidence of meeting #20 for Public Safety and National Security in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was groups.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Brandon Rigato  Lead Research Assistant on Hate and Extremism in Canada, Carleton University, As an Individual
David Morin  Co-Chair, Université de Sherbrooke, UNESCO Chair in Prevention of Radicalisation and Violent Extremism
Carmen Celestini  Post Doctoral Fellow, The Disinformation Project, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
Diana Inkpen  Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Christian Leuprecht  Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University, As an Individual

12:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Jim Carr

Thank you very much.

Now for an opening statement of up to five minutes, I invite Dr. Christian Leuprecht.

You now have the floor.

12:55 p.m.

Dr. Christian Leuprecht Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University, As an Individual

Thank you for having invited me to appear here today.

I'll be happy to answer your questions in both official languages, but I'll be delivering my address in English.

While violent extremism in Canada is a marginal phenomenon, situations arising out of IMVE garner a lot of public attention, followed by political commitments and opportunities, such as these committee meetings, to move on certain policies. Detecting IMVE and disrupting it is costly, and those costs are disproportionate to the benefits.

Other areas, such as cyber-threats, foreign interference and foreign espionage, are far more consequential for Canada's security, prosperity and democracy, but are difficult to quantify publicly in the absence of human casualties. If done better and more systematically, rebalancing Canada's national security and policing posture with a greater emphasis on cyber, organized crime, money laundering and protecting Canadians from foreign malign actors, etc., would have a far greater benefit for public safety and depriving IMVE of resources and enablers than the current approach, whose track record seems neither particularly efficient nor effective.

Who is likely to sympathize with, provide material support for or engage in violent extremism and why have become two of the most pressing security questions of all time. Pragmatically, the question is made more difficult by the small numbers of those in this category, on the one hand, and the vast majority of people in comparable circumstances who exhibit a staunch resilience against radicalization, on the other hand.

We need to distinguish between ideologically motivated violent extremism and ideologically motivated extremist violence. The former concerns the narrative; the latter concerns action. We can sketch these in the form of two pyramids. At the apex are those who feel a sense of personal, moral obligation, followed by those who justify the narrative, and below them are those who sympathize with it. In the action pyramid, you have the terrorists at the apex, then the radicals who support them and below them are activist sympathizers.

During testimony before this committee on May 12, 2021, CSIS's Tim Hahlweg used a comparable analogy when he referred to three tiers: passive engagement, active engagement and mobilizing the violence. Chief Superintendent Duheme testified that he was gravely concerned with the extremist views that are first fostered, for instance, online, and can lead to actual physical violence. However, Mr. Hahlweg was much more nuanced in acknowledging that there is neither a conveyor belt nor a causal relationship.

In fact, the relationship between narrative and action is indeterminate. Few in the narrative pyramid ever move to action, and action is not necessarily motivated by a belief in the narrative. Ideology is only one of the 12 micro-, meso- and macro-mechanisms that drive radicalization. Ideology is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for radical action. That is, ideology does not cause extremist action, and many incidents of extremist violence are not necessarily motivated by ideology. When ideology is present, it turns out to be a rationale to justify extremist action and violence that people had already intended to engage with, in any event. In short, decades of evidence from psychology confirm that what people say is a poor predictor of what they will actually do.

For policy purposes, countering or changing a particular narrative, such as IMVE, is quite distinct from the problem of stopping people from perpetrating extremist violence or actions. The aforementioned numbers show that extremist violence in Canada, however problematic, remains rare and isolated. CSIS, CSE and the NSICOP acknowledge as much in their annual report, which highlights other issues, such as cyber. However, these issues are less politically appealing than IMVE.

Similarly, sympathy toward violence or breaking the law—that is, the problem of mass radicalization—is not widespread in Canada among any community, in contrast to select subgroups in some European countries, for instance, and, arguably, the United States. As Chief Superintendent Duheme confirmed during his testimony:

The most common threat actors we see are individuals with no clear group affiliation, who are motivated by highly personalized and nuanced ideologies that lead individuals to incite and/or mobilize to violence.

He went on to refer to the “increasingly individualized and leaderless nature of this threat environment”, while Mr. Hahlweg confirmed that “there's no common ideology that binds these groups.”

In other words, both violent extremism and extremist violence and action are marginal phenomena in Canada that I think we can reasonably well contain.

1 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Jim Carr

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we have just enough time for a full round of questions.

We'll begin with Mr. Lloyd with six minutes. Begin whenever you're ready, sir.

1 p.m.

Conservative

Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to start with Dr. Leuprecht. It was really interesting testimony from you.

In a previous panel with Dr. Morin, I explored the concept of deprivation—he used the term—and the idea that a lot of IMVE or extremist root causes are related to people either being deprived or having the fear of being deprived. I used the example of unemployment.

Would you agree with Dr. Morin's assessment that this is one of the root causes of radicalization?

1 p.m.

Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University, As an Individual

Dr. Christian Leuprecht

Do you mean deprivation as in material deprivation? I just want to clarify what you mean by deprived.

1 p.m.

Conservative

Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB

Unemployment is an example I used.

1 p.m.

Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University, As an Individual

Dr. Christian Leuprecht

I think the challenge with deprivation is that it's the catch-all explanation for just about anything and everything that ails our society. I think that, yes, deprivation is a significant intervening variable, but of course there are many individuals who are materially or otherwise deprived in our society who do not harbour extremist thoughts and do not engage in extremist action.

1 p.m.

Conservative

Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB

Of course, Dr. Leuprecht.

Would you agree that when you're identifying the rare cases of people who are extremists, something related to deprivation related to a material loss could be a motivating factor?

1 p.m.

Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University, As an Individual

Dr. Christian Leuprecht

If we look at the January 6 storming of the U.S. Congress and analyze the people who were engaged in that, it turns out many were middle class. Many did not suffer deprivation. Yes, while it is one intervening variable that I think can drive extremism, it would be a mistake to chalk it up as a causal variable.

My concern is that this will cause us to have massive spending policies to somehow alleviate violent extremist thoughts. I'm not sure that taking people out of deprivation would necessarily remedy that, nor, as I say, for the lots of people in the middle class who hold objectionable or even extremist views.

1 p.m.

Conservative

Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB

I appreciate that explanation.

When we're talking about what Dr. Morin was saying, in the example I used about January 6, a lot of the people were middle class. He identified that a lot of these people feared deprivation or feared that their standard of living or their position in society would be impacted.

Would you agree that it was their fear of deprivation that could be a contributing variable as well?

1 p.m.

Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University, As an Individual

Dr. Christian Leuprecht

Certainly perception plays a huge role any time someone acquires or sympathizes with extremist views, let alone with extremist action. That is certainly one of the challenges of, I think, the last 20 years.

Many people in the middle class fear that they might be losing some of their privileges. I think it is important for government to reassure the public that our policies are equitable and are meant not just to preserve jobs and social standing for the people who have it but also to assure social mobility for people who are looking to rise up.

1 p.m.

Conservative

Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB

You said the overwhelming number of people in Canada are very resilient to extremism and radicalization.

Would you agree that part of that resilience stems from such things as economic success, relative prosperity, strong community bonds and strong family bonds? Would you say that those factors contribute to a strong resilience to extremism?

1:05 p.m.

Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University, As an Individual

Dr. Christian Leuprecht

Canada is an interesting outlier compared with countries such as France, the U.K. and even the U.S., in that we don't have a problem of mass radicalization per se among any particular identifiable community.

I think it is important for Canada to ask itself what we have done right. One thing that I think we have done right is making all Canadians feel part of our political communities with the policies and the social citizenship policies that we have in place, which give everybody an equitable stake in ownership in our societies.

1:05 p.m.

Conservative

Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB

When we're talking about the phasing out of traditional industries, in my region we had the accelerated coal phase-out. Government had a just transition where they put money for it. You might not be familiar, but the Auditor General came out yesterday and said that the government absolutely failed to provide a just transition for coal workers who were put out of work due to the government's policies.

If they phase out these industries, cost people these jobs and all the impacts of that, and they fail to provide some sort of pathway for these people to become economically successful again, do you think this could contribute to some radicalization?

1:05 p.m.

Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University, As an Individual

Dr. Christian Leuprecht

I'm not sure it necessarily contributes to radicalization, but it certainly contributes to people holding, in some cases, more nationalistic views for economic protectionism. That is what the electoral data in continental Europe around such groups suggests. If we want to avoid a swing to the right amongst certain electoral groups, we're certainly well served by equitable economic policies under the circumstances that you described.

1:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Jim Carr

Thank you.

Mr. Sarai, welcome to the committee. It's always good to see you, and we're happy to see you around the table with us this morning.

You have a six-minute block of questioning whenever you're ready.

April 28th, 2022 / 1:05 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

Thank you, Chair. It's always a pleasure to be on. It's my first time under your chairmanship, so it's a delight.

This is a topic that is very interesting to me. I take it as very similar to what I've seen with South Asian gang violence in Vancouver, where there's prevention, intervention and then there's enforcement.

Dr. Leuprecht said very clearly, I think, on the enforcement side, it seems like our government is doing a decent job, especially CSIS, CSE and the RCMP, in making sure that it doesn't reach levels of violence. What concerns me is that even a small group can end up influencing a lot, and the differences happening are through algorithms.

My question is to Dr. Celestini from SFU. Welcome, from my neck of the woods.

How do you regulate algorithms by social media to prevent them from contributing to ideologically motivated violent extremism movements? What we're seeing is that people punch in once—they may have a question—and then they get bombarded with that theory or those extreme ideologies over and over again.

They may have initially just wondered if it was true, but then they get so much information that they start believing that it is true. I'm more concerned about that level of people who get influenced by it as opposed to those who are already hardened and extreme.

Is Dr. Celestini still on?

1:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Jim Carr

I think we have a technical problem.

1:05 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

Maybe I'll go to Ms. Inkpen, based on her knowledge of the computer science background on it.

1:05 p.m.

Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Dr. Diana Inkpen

You mean if somebody's searching for something, they will get more of the same? There is an algorithm that computes similarity between their search and the next one. This is usually useful because you are looking for information on XY, and you get that. They also use it for advertising to try to match the content with what you care about so that they don't give you totally irrelevant advertising.

You're right. If you look for some bad things, it could give you more bad things. It's hard to control. You could have some sort of measure of negativity, I guess.

1:05 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

In the old days you would go to your librarian and ask them for help, and the librarian gives you all the books in a range on that topic: the good, the bad and the ugly. As you say, an algorithm is designed to make sure you stay engaged, and for longer.

We've seen, with what Facebook has stated in the U.S. when they appeared before Congress—or a former member—that even though they know it's causing harm, they want to keep you engaged longer so that they can pump out more ads to you, but they're not giving you a balanced perspective. They're not giving you, “This is the conspiracy. This is what one view is. This is the other.” They're not giving you everything on the topic. They're only giving you what's keeping you there longer.

Do you not think that needs to be revised and that some sorts of measures need to be in place?

1:10 p.m.

Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Dr. Diana Inkpen

Facebook and others have their way of monitoring, but it doesn't work that well.

There could be a measure of diversity in retrieved results. Recommender systems could give you several things that are of interest, but they could ensure diversity. They could give you more perspectives and more different things, even if they're less related but have higher diversity, and not rank them very low. They can make this recommender in their systems have more diversity to not give you only one kind of thing, even if you are only interested in that. That might even increase engagement, because the user could find something else they didn't know they might find interesting.

1:10 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

Are you saying that this could be helpful but it could be harmful, too, or are you saying that it would be wiser to have that as opposed to just getting bombarded with the same content over and over?

1:10 p.m.

Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Dr. Diana Inkpen

I'm just saying that they could design the systems better to retrieve similar things but with a wider perspective—a similarity in content, allowing things that are not fully similar but related, and having different points of view. There could be some way of determining points of view automatically and presenting them to the user.

But this is for research. The tools to do that are not readily available.

1:10 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

Thank you, Dr. Inkpen.

Dr. Leuprecht, you've seen and monitored in Europe and France and other places the rising extremism that happens. Can some of it be attributed to the algorithms and the way in which social media pushes out information to you, based on a search, to keep you engaged—not to give you all perspectives, but rather to keep you engaged so that they can pump out more ads and make more money?